Student Profiles

Judah Schept is a fifth year graduate student and PhD candidate. Judah received his BA in Sociology from Vassar College, where he participated for two years in a fieldwork placement at a men’s maximum-security prison.  He credits this program with changing his academic direction and considers it a seminal politicizing experience. Since then, Judah has been active in community organizing efforts and national activism around the prison industrial complex. Indiana University recently awarded Judah the prestigious John H. Edwards Fellowship, recognizing his academic performance and dedication to community empowerment.  Having completed his qualifying examinations and successfully defended his dissertation proposal, Judah has begun conducting local ethnographic research that explores Monroe County’s plans to expand the adult and youth jail systems.  He is particularly interested in studying the discourses of rationalization for and resistance to the proposed expansion, paying close attention to how local narratives of crime, safety and justice relate to and differ from national-level and urban narratives. Judah recently taught an undergraduate seminar course on social movements, resistance and law and currently teaches our undergraduate “Alternative Systems of Control” core course.

Our first-year graduate students are outstanding. Meet, for example, Alexa Sardina. Alexa, who grew up in Lewiston NY, earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology from Emory University. She also graduated with an MA in Criminal Justice from Boston University, where she won the award for Outstanding Academic Achievement. Her research has focused on marginalized rape victims and their experience in society, especially throughout the criminal justice system. Her major research areas focus on sexual violence against women, juvenile justice, and sexual perpetrators. Alexa brings practical experience to our department; e.g., she has worked in Atlanta, Georgia's juvenile court system with abused and neglected children. She also reflects our department's strong commitment to social justice. In 2001, she founded what would develop into a highly successful non-profit organization that assists rape victims and their families; she continues to be involved with the organization as she seeks other ways to respond better to victims of sexual violence.